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It’s been quiet on the blog for a while. It’s been far from quiet in the Safe House though and as I’ve mentioned before, sometimes I just have to decide where to put my time and energy. Oh boy! Have it had a few other places to put my time and energy recently!!

The Breakdown

Dealing with Biggey’s breakdown and her move into Foster Care has been huge, tiring, insulting, upsetting and a relief. Dealing with Littley’s response to the breakdown has also been a juxtaposition of challenge and ease.

Since July Biggey has now been in 4 placements. The first was meant to be short term but Biggey didn’t want to come back so they had to find a place for longer. The second place broke down when after a month Biggey exploded and threw stones (rocks I think) and damaged the FC. Then she was in an emergency “bridging” placement whilst they looked for somewhere else. (Interestingly, this bridging placement is not official counted as a place! Let’s not get into how numbers are fiddled ….). So then she was found a place with a private FC who is an absolutely lovely, strong understanding lady. It’s in a different City so over an hours travel from us, but still. She’s fantastic and has communicated and worked with us greatly (which is significantly different to the other experiences – but that’s a whole other story!).

In all this time Biggey has not been in school. Part of the issues around breakdown was that school couldn’t cope and plans were being made for her to move schools. So, no school since July.

A new school was found and I went to look round. It was fantastic! Specialising in hard to reach children, no class size bigger than 8, staff ratio of 1 to 4 children and vocational classes every afternoon in hair, beauty, cooking and mechanics. Sounds perfect. She started at the beginning of November.

She’s just been suspended for dangerous, threatening behaviour. They don’t think it’s the right place for her.

School say they’ve never seen a child with such constant rage and difficulty. They have angry kids there – just not angry ALL. THE. TIME. She rampaging through other classrooms, not just in her own or in corridors.

Foster Carer has given her 28 day notice. She threatened to harm the FC’s 3 year old grandson. It’s too much risk.

Of course it is. She is dangerous. She is such a destructive mess. What a shame.

So, I lie awake at 5am. What can be done?! My sleeplessness is not going to sort it out. It’s in the hands of authorities but still she is a huge concern to me.

She is still placed under Section 20. Which I have concerns about (there’s another blog!) The LA will not provide any help, support or respite so she cannot return to us. We cannot keep her safe or meet her needs and must consider Littley’s in all this too. Yet it seems that others cannot help her and provide for her either.

So, we wait again, to see what will happen next with her.

I’m grateful that we no longer walk on egg shells every day as we did when she lived here. I’m grateful that Biggey has had a period of being calmer (before she went back to school).

Littley is also calmer and being able to do some “normal” things, like have a friend round, without worrying about Biggey’s sabotage, rage and destruction.

I’m thankful I’ve done so much personal therapeutic work which helped me to stay strong through all this.

People are saying I look well. I feel well (which was a bit strange until I got used to it!!). I’ve lost weight (yay) not from stress but because I have energy to shop properly and plan meals and cook! OK I’ll stop boasting …

It was thanksgiving day yesterday. Even if we are not in USA it can still be good to take a moment and notice the things we are thankful for.

The breakdown seemed really terrible at the time. It was rough at times and we have been treated appallingly in meetings. Overall, things are better. For 3 out of 4 of us.

Like this:

It’s been a hell of a week and we’ve been increasing the adoption statistics.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about I Can’t Believe It but this is the biggest time of disbelief I’ve ever had.

A while ago Julie Selwyn published Beyond the Adoption Order. The report showed that children from adoption and foster care who were most likely to become disruptive were

Children aged 11 and up

Who had come into care aged over four or over and

Those who experienced delays and multiple placements.

The reality in our family is:

She’s 13 and we’ve been struggling for ever really but definitely since starting secondary school at age 11! Tick!

She went into care at 3 years 6 months- almost a tick

She wasn’t placed with us until she was 5 years 7 months after 3 foster placements and a previously matched family who backed out at last minute. Oh I think that’s a big tick!

The report also talks about the harsh reality for the minority of families where placements collapsed under the strain with too little support from social services and adoption agencies.

Our Support History

Within the first 6 months of being placed with her sister we had running away, kicking, biting, punching, spitting and more. Our local (very good at the time) CAMHS psychologist told us they should not have been placed together! The placing LA told us it’s both or none. We delayed the adoption order to try and ensure we had the right support in place. It didn’t help in the end. The placing LA social workers were so obstructive that I began to wonder what their real priority was – helping the children or covering their backs?

We got no support, so paid privately for therapy. That business is now recognised provider under the Adoption Support Fund. Therapy helped and we discovered just how desperately and horridly neglected and abused my girls were. This came from their therapy, not from files and LA information. When we got to the really big stuff she got so violent that we were asked to leave! So therapy stopped.

Skip forward to the last two years when I started writing this blog. The list of blogs which highlight the issues, struggles and fights I’ve had to get support. All this takes effort and there have been times when I have to decide where my efforts need to go and I stopped doing blogs for a bit or stopped fighting for a bit.

In the last two years – since she was 11 (there’s that statistic again) her violence and difficulty have escalated and escalated.

She already regularly attacks me which I’ve written about in Child to Parent Violence. She’s re-enacting everything from birth family and she totally hates her birth mum and what she did yet now, that is being played out again but directed at me.

She’s threatening her little sister and that’s scary – for her and us. She carries out most of her threats these days.

School Issues

School (her second secondary school) have said they can’t cope and even though I put my cards on the table with suggestions she ended up under the PRU- Pupil Referral Unit (for those who don’t know – that’s the school where children go if excluded or with severe emotional / behavioural issues when all other schools cannot have them).

Even when I am working with the Local Authority to try and get City-wide help for all adopted children in school, it hasn’t been fast enough for Biggey.

Part of the answer for schooling was to leave her home with me Monday morning and All day Friday’s! Didn’t help us at all. Where an entire school of staff cannot cope, the little alone me is supposed to! Its ridiculous.

Adoption Support

We have repeatedly asked for support and mostly been offended by their responses. The latest request in March was a bit more successfully and we thought change would be coming when we persuaded Social Services to allow us to apply for the Adoption Support Fund (even to get to that was a struggle). I’ve repeatedly told our SW we are struggling, we need respite only to be told it’s not available under the ASF. I don’t care who provides it – we need it. No-one listening.

Earlier this week she stropped, kicked off and ran away (again). We found her, got her home but still violent and aggressive. I escalated (again) through Social Services and eventually two Social Workers came.

They asked her what she wants. She wants to go into care. She’s asked this before, several times.

The SW offered to see her daily if necessary to help her and us. Where was that when I was on my knees? When I kept asking for it? No matter, Biggey was adamant, we are knackered / traumatised / worn out and same as last September, wondering Why Bother?

So there we have it. We met the final statistic.

Placements collapse under strain with too little support from social services and adoption agencies.

She’s in “voluntary care whilst our family is in crisis” they said. I don’t know how long for, I don’t know what will happen next.

It’s calmer and quieter in the Safehouse, although Littley is still terrified Biggey will be home any day now to carry out the violent threats. I don’t know where this leaves us except feeling sad, let down, disappointed and failed.

Even my mum needs to be told this, so I shout it at her so she hears me.

It’s two weeks to end of school and then everyone will leave. All the teachers will leave. My safe person has already left me. It doesn’t matter that people tell me she’s gone to hospital for an operation. She’s left me. I don’t believe them that she’ll be back. Loads of other people have said things to me and left me anyway. My mum calls it “endings” sometimes. Why can’t I remember that people do come back? It’s all going to be so different. I’m really worried about being alone and I won’t know my teachers and I can’t manage Year 8. I don’t want to look like a baby but I feel like a baby and I need my mum and she’s not there at school because it not cool to do that. I fuss a lot when I feel like this and so my friends walk off and then I’m alone again.

It’s so very tiring living this way. Wondering who will be there are the beginning and end and middle of the days.

So on Monday morning when I wake up tired and grumpy and say I don’t want to go to school my mum hugs me and says

ok baby. Don’t go.

I look at her a bit funny because she doesn’t usually say that.

We crawl into her bed and she puts her arm round me. I think I go back to sleep.

**

My arm is numb but I daren’t move it. I’ve got loads to do today yet here I am laid in bed with baby attached to me like a limpit. She’s boiling, but if I move she moves with me. She needs to “feel” attached. Even in her sleep she knows if we move and will follow us or wake up.

It’s 8:55 am on a Monday morning and the abandonment issue is well and truly in force.

In that split second this morning I made a decision – I really did not want tired girl. Tired girl means she’s feels unsafe anyway because she never got much sleep when she was little. Tired girl thinks she’s back there and has to work much harder then she already does to make sure we know she’s there. Then she’s even more tired. Most of all, Tired girl has the most enormously loud cry. We’ll, it’s a wailing actually but still incredibly loud and you really really cannot ignore it.

I don’t want her to wake up. She’s so much better when she’s not tired (aren’t we all!) and she can deal with things better when she’s not tired (so can I). So she’s laid asleep beside me (the dog at the other side). Ideally I’d like to rearrange the pillows so I can be comfortable. I’d also liked to have had chance to get a cuppa but I didn’t. So I stay here, drafting this on my phone, being uncomfortable, so that she sleeps.

Then eventually, hopefully, we will be able to get up and cope with the adandonment that the day throws at us. The other stuff I was going to do probably won’t get done. It wouldn’t have got done if there’s been an almighty kick off which took up some time and left me feeling drained for rest of day either!

All the transition / keep in mind tools are already in use again. She has a photo discreetly tucked in her bag. She wears my perfume and sometimes I put a plait in her hair or a pony tail and tell her that she’s got a little bit of me with her all the time in her hair and she can feel it. She’s got extra money for toast at break time to help her regulate. She takes pack-up so she doesn’t have to wait for the food at lunchtime and can get straight into a calming sensory soothing strategically made lunchbox that is also filled with love and kisses and crunch and sucky things.

She will meet me again at the end of the day (and oh boy I will have to remember to do the big hugs and full on attention).

Then we’ll start all over again.

The good news is that we don’t have to do this all the time. After 8 years, we don’t always need to ” do the perfume and stuff” (as she calls it). Now we just do it when things go wobbly until the wobbles stop for a bit.

The first words we heard from our beautiful daughter when she came running out of the foster carers house. She was fairly closely followed by big sister who stumbled towards us saying nothing and keeping her head down. They couldn’t believe their new family were finally here to meet them.

Well, we couldn’t believe it either. After about two years going through the process of approval and matching, we were finally meeting our girls and becoming a family. This weekend we went out for a family meal to celebrate our 8 years together.

Littley is still chatty and dramatic about events although much quieter than when we first met; Biggey still, mostly says as little as possible and although she doesn’t keep her head down these days, it’s very quick to go down at any given moment.

In those 8 years there’s an awful lot of things that have happened that I can’t believe I’ve lived through and experienced. It has been the most incredibly steep learning curve and one that I was not prepared for and could never have imagined.

When I began learning about effects of attachment, trauma, neglect, abuse, loss and how the children respond it made perfect sense to me. Yet even when it all made sense, when I went to more conferences and training events I got to know more, I implemented everything I could, there’s still so much to content with. I’m glad I know what I do, goodness knows what state we would be in as a family if I didn’t!

We lost friends and even family support along the way, yet we’ve gained some truly wonderful, supportive friends too. Adoption has filled our lives in more ways than with just the girls. It has also restricted our lives too and we certainly live life very differently to that which we imagined when we started the process.

So, here’s my top 10 things I can’t believe.

I can’t believe:

That we were told “they just need firm boundaries”.

That in 8 – 10 years since we entered the process things haven’t changed much.

That it’s apparently OK that even now we are finding out crucial information from files which would explain just how terrible their early life was.

That the education system is not able to accommodate my girl even with a Statement of Needs.

That we are well known to the police (but they are very nice and helpful about it).

That I have had to learn to restrain my children – I certainly wasn’t told that on the prep course!

That there are so many days when I say I can’t do this anymore, then get up again the next day, finding strength from somewhere to carry on.

That instead of continuing to work in the corporate world that I now have my own very small, but very flexible business.

That I am campaigning for change in our LA so that the Virtual Head is involved with adopted children.

That we have dog! This really would never have happened if it wasn’t for Biggey’s intense needs but he’s almost the best thing we have done since the girls came.

Like this:

So, I was at the PAC-UK / Yorkshire & Humber Conference (Being Family) on Monday about Getting the Best for Adoption Children in School. Can I stress that these are only my notes (with my views in blue) there may be errors and omissions. Please don’t hold me to account! 🙂

It was a packed agenda where a selection of Social Workers, Adopters and Schools from the Y&H region were invited to attend. There was reasonable attendance from all areas, although I would have liked to have seen more from schools if I’m honest.

Even if you are not in Yorkshire & Humber, I hope there are some nuggets in here that everyone would find helpful or provide hope of this type of support eventually becoming more widespread across all schools and Local Authorities! I’ve attempted to give the highlights.

Mick Gibbs, Chair of Regional Adoption Board began with some comments, most notably a mention that

Instead of School Inclusion and Exclusion, think about School Attachment

Contrary to popular belief, care does make things better

Next up Sir Martin Narey. He talked about adoption changes over the years and the number of myths surrounding adoption and breakdowns. He said adopters were not treated well but that the process for recruitment has changed to improve that. There are still significant challenges with time taken for matching, behaviour of courts and the support fund being only available for one year. Personally, I believe we are still not treated well, we are still not respected and recognised as being a powerful force that can create a change in these children.

The issues are schooling can be solved quite easily with few changes because the issues do not disappear overnight.

There is nothing else like adoption for the ability to transform a life.

Sir Narey said that he is happy to be contacted by email and he attempts to answer every one received!

Education: from Rainbows to Reality

PAC-UK’s Chief Exec, and their refreshingly straight talking Education Psychologist Emma Gore Langton talked about there being a disconnect at all levels that there is a misguided view that adoption is ‘lovely’. Key things were that

Brain structure changes our view of the world – all this we know. (We do! I’m not sure everyone knows, certainly not all schools and educators).

A teacher will hold on to information about a child in misunderstood ‘confidentiality’. (They do! I’ve experienced that more than once much to the detriment of my children!)

Schools are anxious about parents’ expectations, so they don’t communicate. There is particular difficulty in secondary schools. (Really? I agree they don’t communicate, agree secondary schools are particularly difficult. I’ve heard schools saying “we deal with in school” which may be a bigger reason for not communicating. I’ll give this the benefit of doubt!)

On exclusions, no real data but Adoption UK Survey said

more than 50% were at secondary schools

1 in 5 children were age 6 or younger

there is serious impact on the most vulnerable children.

Education is a key reason for seeking post adoption support (true for me!)

Transition from primary to secondary increases stress on families according to Selwyn report. (absolutely! It has nearly broken my family)

Curriculum issues can trigger crisis (yes, and schools will not listen)

There is a DFE grant for schools in the Y&H region to become Attachment Aware. (Brilliant!)

Pupil Premium

Alan Clifton, The Virtual Head from North Yorkshire talked about Pupil Premium and even though I thought I knew lots about Pupil Premium he had some interesting perspectives.

There are 152 Local Authorities across the country and all have a Virtual School Head (VSH) responsible for Looked After Children (this is statutory now). That means that there are 152 ways to allocate Pupil Premium and it’s uses! DFE Guidance (from 2009) says “it is good practice for adopted children to be monitored”.

All adopters should find out who your local Virtual Head is.

Personal Education Plans (PEPs) are a good monitoring tool (although not statutory) but helpful for progress, attainment, outcomes, relationships and even friendships, because it should cover Social and Emotional Wellbeing too. You can get a sample PEP from your VSH or from him (Alan Clifton).

your child’s feelings (that’s a big one for me, I find teachers talk ‘at’ rather than listen to my child)

The key thing is relationships! (Absolutely right, this is what is missing in their early lives and as human beings we all need those relationships, our children need them more so.)

A Special School’s Approach

There was a really lovely presentation by a Leeds special school about the work they did with a particularly troubled child. They had some training from Family Futures and talked about what helped and what worked.

Key Needs are Communication, Consistency and Care.

Provide choices

Model behaviour, explain what that behaviour should look like and what it means.

Set limits and explain expectations

Be specific with wording (rather than “well done”, say “I really liked how you lined up”)

Pick your battles

Address the child’s sensory needs

Be aware of anxiety and stress

The most valuable resource? HIS PARENTS! and the Adoption Social Worker.

(I wanted to jump for joy when they said parents were most valuable resource, because I, and many of us, feel we are ignored or not listened to. Yet there still seems to be a lack of understanding that we don’t all have social workers any more or any other professional support!)

Adopter Experiences

Amanda and Sarah said everything I wished I was able to say! Both highlighting the inability to work when we have adopted children who struggle with life and school. Sarah mentioned there has been perhaps 3 weeks this year when both children have been in school “where they should be”. It is a full time job being “on call” for school so she can bring her child home. (Oh yes, I know that approach!)

Many adopters talk about schools trying to “force a square peg into a round hole”. (I wanted to stand up a cheer at this point! That’s exactly what I have been saying!)

Sarah went on to say that our children have a right to an education and they way they are treated does not help our children’s self esteem.

Can schools please find some square holes for our children?

Amanda explained about her issues with 3 different schools by the time Jazz was 8 years old before resorting to a version of Home Education. Highlighting that there are big groups of adopters who home education because they feel they have no choice. (I know! I’m been close to that many times.)

If you do feel you have to Home Education, ensure your child stays on the school register so that you still have links and can hope to progress to a slow integration back into school. Amanda had the same teacher at home for 10 hours and then the same at school.

It is useful to have some days at home as Therapy Days so families can invest in that time and reduce school stressors, work on attachment and have calm down time. (Whoop, whoop Amanda. That’s exactly what I arranged for Biggey last month. Although, it only happened because school said they can’t cope!)

When Amanda talked about friendship issues and the fact that “sometimes the only people at birthday parties were the teachers” there was a big ahhh all around me. Will it be enough to create a change though? I certainly hope so.

There’s more. That will have to follow in blog part 2. For now, I’m linking up with #WASO.

What an eventful day I had on Monday! It was already planned to be a fairly eventful day as I was due to attend the PAC-UK / Yorkshire Adoption Consortium Conference on Education (more of this in another post).

Whilst ploughing through the usual Monday morning routine, my Littley was a bit of a mess with fussy difficult behaviour. Often I will stop everything and give her the attention she needs, however, I didn’t really have time, so was doing my best to jolly things along and just get them both to school. We were nearly there and she breaks down, wailing, weeping, (she’s very dramatic)

I think I’m going die.

Oh god. Here we go. Does it really have to be today? This morning? Of all mornings? (and some silent swearing …..) Whilst I’m busy drawing breath, composing myself to do some wondering she went on

I manage to grab her and just cuddle, holding tightly to her shaking sobbing body and she continues

But they can’t really can they …

They would need a gun, it’s really the only way I can think of to kill someone, and you have to be 18 to have a gun don’t you? So they won’t have a gun, so they won’t be able to kill me, will they? Oh, I didn’t think of it like that.

Oh darling. Well done. You sorted that out yourself, just by talking about it. Isn’t that amazing.

Inside my head, as I’m sure you are thinking – she hasn’t figured that there are more ways to kill someone, that this is just a saying, that if someone is going to commit murder they are not going to be concerned about whether they are the right age to have that weapon or even if it is legal or not!

So here’s an 11 year old, thinking of things in a 3 year old way, expected to go to secondary school and function, safely, on her own, under threat, fearing for her life because of the stupid phrases that people use and the mindless threats that big boys make.

We avoided death – for that day.

Later, whilst in the conference, I got a text from school asking if I could give them a call. Erm, no actually I can’t, can they text me?

Oh, just wanted to update you. Biggey is saying to people she is pregnant.

Marvellous! School said, we haven’t discussed it with her, cos she hasn’t said it direct to staff. Oh well, that’ll be fine then. I suppose you do the same response if one of those big boys is saying he’s got a gun in school???? More silent swearing, mid-conference.

Here is a girl who runs away, associates with the ones we’d rather she didn’t, is a prime target for exploitation and this could (if she ever went anywhere) be true. Lying is also a classic reaction in attachment difficulties. So they ignored it. Great.

I sent a long text back with detailed wording of what to say, how to say it. They did but oh, it needs so much managing that again I wonder if it’s worth it.

We are not pregnant. No new baby. No choosing baby names. No knitting. No reason to keep her off school!!!!!

Death and new life is not happening in the Safehouse just yet.

How ironic that all this happens on the day I’m at a conference about how to help these children in school.

Like this:

Last October, on the back of the marvellous work by @garethmarr as detailed in his blog , I tweeted my Local Authority and asked if they would do something about helping Adopted Children in schools. Surprisingly, I got a response asking me to come along and see what the Virtual Head was doing. Sounds great, although slightly puzzling because I hadn’t heard of anything happening.

The meeting didn’t get fixed for ages but I remained hopeful and eventually met in February 2015 for the first meeting. I went along with a fellow adopter from our local support group and there was the Virtual Head, Director of Children’s Services and the Head of Adoption Support too.

Reason for Meeting

I positioned my reason for asking to meet. Explaining that at our support group, every time we meet there are school issues raised, that individual adopters are going into schools to teach and train the staff, which works quite well, providing the adopter has enough knowledge, feels comfortable doing that and that school will allow us in! I asked explained that we then have to continue to go in year on year to update, starts again with next member of staff, or whatever. Is also expressed how difficult it is do this when the child goes to secondary schools (as I have experienced) because there are so many teachers and members of staff and in any event, the schools are reluctant to let you in.

I mentioned Gareth’s success in his LA and I asked if it was possible for this LA to work with us to look at using training and pupil premium money to cascade down something more helpful at has a longer term impact. I also highlighted (as we all know) that this will have a positive impact on our children in the school. I gave the usual Pupil Premium spiel, that the government recognises these children need additional help etc etc.

Hurdles

There was some discussion about how difficult it was to identify adopters because our LA do not place within the authority. I asked them to use the school census to begin to identify, to also use their adopter records along with records that could potentially be found from the support groups. There was also a suggestion about promoting things via Twitter and other places to encourage adopters to get in touch. (Tick, one hurdle dealt with).

The Initial Outcome

By the end of that meeting, they were going to take it forward and agreed to do a few things:

Look at gathering information about adopters,

Look at the available funding from pupil premium

Look at some sort of central training across the authority

Get message out to Head Teachers

We asked to meet again in a couple of months to review the situation. It was step in the right direction, yet I wasn’t about to start singing and dancing about it yet!

The Follow Up

We met again in middle of April and I wasn’t feeling that hopeful. My contacts in schools had not particularly heard anything and we had not seen any information about contacting adopters. However, it was better than I thought!

They had done quite a bit of work and

Have been in touch with other nearby Local Authorities to see what they are doing and share information

They have identified how many adopted children there are in each school.

Looked at some case studies (in addition to the ones recently released by BAAF).

Looked at what training was available

Looked at providing information to schools.

I explained that there are a number of booklets, leaflets and helpful documents around that could be used for this. (I probably have copies of all of them so will be sending them those soon!)

Latest Situation

By the end of this meeting there is

Identify an adoption lead in each school (probably the one responsible for Looked After Children, as it would make sense to extend their role)

Provide training to schools and the Adoption Support Team. This is looking at providing training in schools, rather than having staff go outside of school and outside working hours (as I had said that relies on them being willing to that).

Raise the profile of how staff talk to children has a huge impact

Explain how the usual shame-based sanctions are so detrimental.

Brief all Head Teachers and Governors at the next LA briefing session

Put together a “working party” to develop an information booklet of guidance to schools where my fellow adopter and I will be part of this, along with (a very good) Ed Psych and others.

Extend PEP (Personal Education Plans) to all children which will be reviewed termly.

Have Pupil Passports for all adopted children

The Director of Children’s Services is also going to come along to a meeting of the local Adoption Support Group!

So, quite a productive meeting and more work and meetings still in the pipeline.

It’s good that they are keeping me involved. At times though, I do get slightly peeved that I am doing all this as an voluntary adviser. I do also wonder if any of it will ever by effectively in place in time for my children. Yet, I keep going, living in hope of better support, better provision for all adoptive children so that it has a positive impact on the parents too and reduce the #adoptionschoolstrain.